More 2011 in Review: The Rides and the Photos

The past couple of years, I started photographing more of my rides. I like having the tangible memory of an outing. I’ve always written ride stories, but this year, I enjoyed capturing commutes, weekend touring rides, brevets, meetups with friends, and miscellaneous errand running.

Bonding with the Quickbeam by DAR Constitution Hall

I spent a fair amount of time cycling in 2011, in between my other responsibilities and interests, much of it with my best friend and tandem partner Felkerino.

At the beginning of this year, I decided that I wanted to spend less time in cars and Metro. I walked and cycled to work as much as I could, and Felkerino and I both committed to doing more of our errands and things like grocery shopping by bicycle. As a result, I rode more than 270 days this year– 80 more days than in 2010. (Yes, I track that stuff. I’m an analyst. I like to create my own data sets and then compare and contrast. Is that nerdy? You tell me.)

In addition, with PBP marked on the August calendar, Felkerino and I got in some spectacular (and longish) weekend riding. In order to spend less time in the car, we rode more from home, rather than driving to a remote start. To me, it is the ultimate irony to put your bike in the car to go to a bike ride. We still drove, just not as much.

Let’s go coffeeneuring!

All totaled, I ended up cycling more than 8,300 miles this year. In 2010, I rode just over 7,800 miles. Five hundred miles is not that much of a difference over the course of a year, but I think those errand rides throughout the weeks and months added up.

The one thing missing from my 2011 was a weeklong (or more) bike tour. While Felkerino and I made it out for a few overnight trips, our longest multi-day tour was four days. And by the way, 1200K randonnees are not tours! Hopefully, in 2012, we will spend at least one week out on the bike with our panniers and no clock egging us on to the next stop. I love randonneuring, but I really love touring!

Felkerino and me en route to Chartres (c) Greg Conderacci

I was so inspired by Jill Homer’s post about her 2011, that I wanted to do something similar in summarizing my year on the bike. I chose thirteen photos, one for each month except for January, which has two. These pictures represent some of my favorite things about this year’s cycling. I featured the post on its own page, and you can find it here.